Afishionados,

Today marks the third anniversary of Old Fish and Lemonade. And it’s such a big deal that the Republicans have decided to celebrate by holding the Republican National Convention this week. In fact, the Republican party is so proud of me, that they’ve sent along an exclusive photo of Senator John McCain and Sarah Palin from the convention stage in Minnesota. Be sure to click on the photo for the full experience. I think Barack Obama might be hiding out at the convention, too, right behind Bib Fortuna.

Afishionados,

Typically I reserve posting any design work until after I turn in the assignment. However, I feel pretty confident that I am done with this one, aside from some very minor tweaking here and there. It’s due Thursday, but you get to see it today because I care about each and everyone of of you dearly¹ and I am in a sharing mood².

This assignment has been one of my more entertaining ones (in terms of creating it). Each student in the class was given the option to choose one of the human rights from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I wanted Article 5, which states:

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

A lot of my school work up to this point has been very crisp and clean, and I wanted to get my hands dirty, so to speak. I was instructed to choose up to three human rights in the event that I could not get my first choice, but thankfully I ended up getting it.

The stipulations for the assignment were very general and open-ended. The finished product has to be at least 18″ x 24″ and must contain the right in its entirety. Because this is for my advanced typography class, it must also incorporate type in some fashion. Here is what I came up with:

The most difficult part of this whole composition was getting people to read the human right in the correct order. I presented this in it early state to various people all over campus and asked them to read it. Everyone could make it to “torture” but then got confused as to the correct order after that. Originally, the human right read from left to right and spanned across the blood spilled beneath the wrist. Instead, the gap created by the blood divides the right into two separate columns (like a newspaper article). Once I rearranged the human right text to follow the column-like setup, people were able to read it correctly (and hopefully you were able to as well).

The arm in the photo is my own. I’m right-handed, so I had to take a photo of my left arm in order to get a usable shot. I laid out some scrap paper on my desk and snapped it under a fluorescent light. After some quick Photoshopping, I removed the “seams” from the stacks of overlapped paper. My arm is the only subject matter in the initial photo. Everything else was digitally added after the fact. The very first thing I did was remove most of the color from my arm to give it a more corpse-like appearance. Doing so also tended to highlight the veins near my palm and throughout my arm.

Here is a close-up view of the arm carving. I “carved” this out using my Wacom tablet and gave it that nice gory effect in Photoshop. I can’t say as though I have ever cut myself, but after looking at people online who have, I think the illusion is pretty convincing.

All the bruises and stitches in the photo are real, by the way. They just aren’t really on my arm. My favorites are the wrist bruise and the stitches. In the early stages, I only had the blood in the photo and I wasn’t getting enough of an uneasy, disturbed reaction from people. After I added the stitches, bruises and “weapons”, people were really grossed out, as well as engrossed enough to read what the poster was about. Overly gory is ineffective if people are immediately turned off and don’t read it. I think I found a happy middle-ground.

Finally, I looked at a lot of horror movie posters for inspiration. Most, if not all, added some grain over the whole image to give it an even grittier, darker tone. It’s very subtle, but you can make some of it out in the carving photo above. This was the very last effect I did, and it’s amazing how different the poster prints with the grain than without.

I really like the medical tools and the razor blade. The stainless steel saw is fierce-looking, and really disturbs people I’ve shown this poster to. I’m also very proud of the rust effect I added to the razor blade (the image I used was that of a new, clean blade). Rusty razors are much more intimidating. Another “effect” that I am very pleased with is the shadows I added to the saw, the syringe, and the razor (sounds like a C.S. Lewis books from hell, doesn’t it?). It’s one of the effects that I hope people don’t even notice I added because that means it looks realistic, and therefore successful.

Want to see the original photo for comparison? I figured you might. Aside from removing the aforementioned “paper seams” and some very basic color correction, the photo is untouched. Here it is:

While I’m very happy with how the poster turned out, it remains to be seen what the professor thinks. I suppose if she hates it, I’ll try and sell it to Lionsgate for use as the SAW V movie poster.

¹Lies, all lies.

²Actually, I lied about that, too. I’m really in the mood for chocolate ice cream.

Afishionados,

I had to type a research paper for my typography class. A list with various fonts and typographers was passed around the room and everyone in the class chose one. I was one of the last people to get the list, so my choices were pretty slim. For no particular reason, I went with Adrian Frutiger and his “Univers” font.

As part of the assignment I was required to critique the typeface. Univers is not a very exciting looking font, but chances are you’ve seen it multiple times in your life. It’s clean, simple, and easy to read so it’s used quite a bit. One interesting tidbit is that Univers is used in the opening crawl of the Star Wars movies (But only for the name of the movie. For example, when it says “A NEW HOPE” and not for the entire crawl itself). Apple also used it on their keyboards for many years.

For my research paper, I compared Univers to Helvetica because they came out around the same time and look similar in many ways. One distinguishing characteristic of Univers, however, is that the capital G does not have a spur on it and Helvetica does.

I noticed something peculiar while I was adding paper to my printer today. I have a small Missy Higgins tour poster from Australia hanging just above it, and, for some reason, I noticed the “G” in “HIGGINS” looked oddly familiar. It was, of course, the Univers font in one of its 21 variations.

This just proves that it’s fate. Missy and I are meant to be together. Why else would I have randomly chosen Univers? It’s in the cards, folks. It’s destiny. I rest my case.

Click for Larger View

My sister, Ly (AKA “The Pod“) has guessed the sound correctly. The mysterious noise is the sound of me feeding a nickel into a pay phone on campus. Here is a breakdown of the sound and why everything is the way it is in this, a more finalized concept version of my onomatopoeia project.

As I mentioned, I’m not allowed to just fill in the composition with any shapes unless they relate to the text somehow. In this case, the black box represents the pay phone. It’s flush against the wall, and so I moved box from the first concept to the far right side of the page. The pay phone on campus does not accept nickels. It just drops them down to the coin return. This is why the word goes in a semi-circular motion from the top (the coin slot) to bottom (the coin return) and doesn’t stay within the black box. The text also changes font and color for a reason. It starts out as the Futura font because it’s relatively round and fat (like a nickel) and changes to Bodoni because by the time it enters the pay phone it makes a more mechanical sound. Since I’m limited to a specific list of fonts, I think Futura and Bodoni work the best. Because the nickel eventually returns to the coin tray, the font changes from Bodoni back to Futura. The black to white change in the text is also intentional. I made the box black and the text white to represent the path of the nickel traveling inside the pay phone (inside the pay phone would be dark, so therefore the box is dark, too).

Congratulations, counselor, you figured it out.

Click for Larger View

My latest Typography project involves Onomatopoeia. Simply put, onomatopoeia means a word is spelled the same as it sounds. Ironically, the word itself it hard as hell for most people to spell properly.

As with any of my Typography assignments, there are guidelines. They’re not nearly as limiting as the rules for some of my earlier projects, and for that I am glad. The rules are pretty straightforward and simple. First, find a sound on the college campus, describe it in detail (what time, where were you, what created it, how was it created, etc.). Then spell it out as you think the sound would be spelled. Using select fonts (there’s a list of about 7 or 8 and includes both serif and sans-serif), create a 9 x 9 image that portrays your sound.

Click for Larger View

The project is not due yet, and we are still very much in the early stages of it. These are two of my concepts so far. They are very, VERY rough concepts, so don’t go by the [lack of] quality of them.

This design has to be black and white only, and shapes can only be used in association with the text (You can’t just stick a circle or square anywhere you’d like, you have to use it with the text somehow. Kinda like the arrow formed in the Fed Ex logo by the negative space of the letters). Changing the fonts or the size can help emphasize the sound (or parts of the sound) as well. Also, while color is not allowed, black and white can be used to symbolize emotion (For example, if you were going to do a sound of rubbing a balloon, you might make the background white with the text “floating” within the design like a balloon would float. Or bold text could symbolize a louder sound). I’ve got about twenty rough ideas, but these two are my favorites so far. While the project is certainly not the most interesting that I have ever done, it’s certainly not the worst, either.

See if you can figure out what the sound is, because I’m not going to tell you. I will, however, give you a bit of a clue. The image on the top was done long before the image on the bottom with the black rectangle, and I think the black part of it it helps in deciphering the sound it’s supposed to represent. I’m still playing with what fonts best represent the sound, so you’re kind of at a disadvantage in guessing since I haven’t yet decided on which one(s) to use. Everything else in the concepts is intentional, though, so have at it.

Or maybe it’s just a complete failure. What the hell do I know?

The first project for my typography class is due tomorrow. I just finished it a few hours ago. It took a lot more time to do that I thought it would. I didn’t think that shaping oneself with individual characters of a font would be so tedious. This is the photo that I selected for the project.

The next step is to take the photo and create a line drawing from it. Aside from the hair and eyebrows, I regret shading in the other dark areas. It ended up just being a distraction later on. The line drawing is on tracing paper. The idea was to trace as many shapes and features as possible while still keeping it a simple line drawing. I ended up tracing more detail than I needed, as did most people I think.

This is the final part of the project, the typographical representation of oneself. The assignment dictated the following:

1.) Only black and white.
2.) You may use symbols and numbers.
3.) You had to incorporate words that go with the what you are trying to say about yourself.
4.) You have to give credit to the artist if you use song lyrics.

Since I have a small¹ obsession with Missy Higgins, I chose to use her song “Steer.” It’s about taking control of your life and knowing where you want to go. I can’t think of any better song to describe my life right now.

The hardest part of this project was the hair and eyebrows. My first mock up had lyrics overlapped to the point where they were illegible. The plus side is that it created a darker look to it, but it made my hair look curly. I changed it to the Agency font because it’s straighter. I lost some of the contrast of the overall image by doing this, but damn it if the curly hair look didn’t drive me nuts.

To see a larger version of the final image, click here.

¹Huge

I am taking a typography class this quarter and I’ve got another instructor who won’t allow the use of computers in her class. This rule continues to drive me insane, and I continue to flex it in my favor when I can get away with it.

The professor has a reputation for being the most difficult instructor in all of the graphic design instructor, and I often think that she’s let it go to her head. So far, my impression isn’t that she is difficult at all, just demanding and fast paced. She also looks exactly like Cuba Gooding Junior. I don’t mean that she looks a little like him. No, she looks JUST like him, sans the mustache (at least, as much as I can tell from a distance).

Our latest project is to take a photo of ourselves, trace a detailed outline of it (think coloring book) and come up with 20 or so words that describe us and the message about us that we wish to portray. Then, using various fonts, align the letters and characters to create a realistic image of us based on the tracing.

The catch is, you can’t use a computer, which includes finding and using your own fonts. No, you have to go to the library and find books with fonts and photocopy them. Or you can find fonts from magazines or other printed materials. No computer? Photocopies? Haven’t we already done this in 2D design?

I have more than 2000 fonts in my collection, WAY more than ANY book is going to show you. I tried to plead my case to Cuba, asking only if I could print off the font and then lay it out by hand. I didn’t even mention using the computer other than to find fonts that I liked. Her response was this:

“No, because it has to be a level playing field for everyone. You might have 2000 fonts on your computer, but so and so might only have 200. It has to be fair.”

What? Fair? So Sally Suckemsilly can go to the library, check out a book, therefore preventing me from checking out and using said book, but I can’t use fonts on my own computer? And, honestly, if Sally wanted the same font and couldn’t find it, I’d GIVE her a copy of it, too. What the hell? And how is photocopying a layout of a font ANY different than printing off the same layout on a laser jet printer? How many graphic designers out there photocopy fonts, lay them out by hand, then Photocopy them to produce a final piece? Can ANYONE explain this to me? Seriously, I want to meet a graphic designer in today’s world who doesn’t use a computer and only uses books and photocopiers.

I had hoped this quarter’s classes would provide some kind of challenge. Instead, they’ve proven the professors are mentally challenged.

I hope everyone enjoys the new header image at the top of the page. Yes, it’s very similar to the “old” one but I can assure you this one is brand new. “Why?” do you ask? What an excellent question!

Last night I thought I would change my screensaver for the first time in five or six years. I found one that I liked and tried to install it. Words cannot express how truly poor that decision was on my part. A part of me died last night at approximately 9:30 P.M. EST. There’s a good chance that you might have heard me screaming, too.

The screensaver devoured ALL the files on my desktop, including the Photoshop files and templates for this web site. All gone in the blink of an eye. To make matters worse, I didn’t have backups of everything and the REAL salt in the wound is that the screensaver didn’t work anyway!

This is why there is no God. God would not punish a Mac user like this, especially by trying to install a simple screensaver. Windows users on PCs? Absolutely. God would hate them. If he were real.

I have backups of all of my personal files, but I didn’t have backups of all the Photoshop files for the Ministry. Fortunately, there is a software program out there called Data Rescue II which I will vouch does just that. I was able to recover the majority of my files, with the exception of the header image and the Ministry logo file.

When I work on my projects, I save my files as I go. If I make a drastic change, I save it as a new file. This way, if I later decide that what I changed was bad, I can go back to where I started from. I consider most of my stuff (especially the images on my blog) to be works in progress. While I lost the “final” version of the Ministry logo, I was able to “finish” one of the work-in-progress versions that I had backed up. ::Whew::. And Data Rescue II recovered the parchment and cloth backgrounds of the Ministry.

So although God doesn’t exist, Santa had better because I need him to bring me an external hard drive so that I can back up my stuff with Apple’s new Time Machine feature.

And if Santa should fail in his quest to bring the Ministry a hard drive for Christmas?

Afishionados,

Grades for this past quarter have been posted. I got straight As and it’s the first time that I’ve ever had a 4.00 GPA. Just about anything is easier than Nuke School, though. And design classes are a helluva lot more fun, too.

Of course, not everything can be an A. My Mozart brochure ended up being an 82 out of 100 (a low B), so the Colonel was very close in his estimation of a C. Nice work, Carnac.

Here’s the review, straight from her majesty’s mouth:

Several design elements have been editited and manipulated with Photoshop. Computers were to be used to write the panel of type and scan imags only. All effects were to be done manually. Copy inside was to be on ONE panel, not four. Nice overall look to piece.

Notice the typos of “editited” and “imags”. Perhaps it is just me, but shouldn’t professional graphic designers be able to correctly spell terminology associated with their line of work? And is the Queen’s eye so highly trained as to be able to determine which digital editing software suite was used on the Mozart piece? Could she really differentiate between Adobe Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro? Nay, says I. Methinks her highness hath stumbled upon the Fish, in which case I say to her: You’re a terrible professor and a hormonal bitch. Now go away.

The school is in the process of reaccreditation, so the instructors have been keeping various works to show “them” that the school is, in fact, capable of producing results. I shudder to think which brochures the Queen kept as examples of “A quality work”.